Before We Compare Them
Donald Trump has recently embraced a rather extraordinary place in history, one he himself compares to Attila the Hun.
According to journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump proudly showed them a document comparing his power with some of history’s most feared rulers: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, the Caesars, William the Conqueror, Tamerlane, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The document argued that those rulers may have possessed terrifying power in their own time, but their reach was ultimately local compared with Trump’s global reach. Trump reportedly presented the comparison with pride.
There is something almost comical about placing Attila the Hun on such a list.
Not because Attila was a good man. He wasn’t. He was a ruthless conqueror who plundered cities, killed enemies, demanded tribute, and built his reputation through fear.
But because if Trump wants to stand beside Attila as a Great Man of History, it is worth asking a very simple question:
What, exactly, did Attila the Hun have to work with?
He did not inherit the presidency of the world’s most powerful nation. He did not command a permanent military establishment equipped with nuclear weapons. He did not inherit a global economic system, a vast bureaucracy, modern communications, or a network of international alliances.
Attila started with the Huns.
And somehow, he turned them into an empire that terrified Rome.
That is where the comparison gets interesting.
Attila: The Original Empire Mob Boss
If we strip away the romantic mythology surrounding the Huns, Attila’s empire begins to look surprisingly familiar.
It was, in many respects, a vast system of power, loyalty, protection, tribute, rewards, and intimidation.
Attila ruled over a collection of peoples who did not necessarily share a common culture or identity. His power depended upon keeping warriors, tribal leaders, and conquered peoples sufficiently loyal to him that they would continue supplying soldiers and wealth.
And Attila understood the fundamental rule of the mob boss:
Loyalty has to pay.
The Huns needed wealth to reward their allies. Rome had wealth. Attila therefore created a relationship in which Rome repeatedly paid for peace.
The Eastern Roman Empire eventually agreed to enormous payments, including an annual tribute of 2,100 pounds of gold. When Rome resisted, Attila could turn diplomacy into military coercion.
That is not merely brute force.
It is organized power.
Attila could negotiate. He could intimidate. He could form alliances. He could recruit other peoples into his armies. He could reward loyalty and punish defection.
He was, in other words, an empire-level mob boss.
And unlike the stereotypical barbarian warlord, Attila the Hun had studied the people he intended to defeat. He and his brother were taught military skills as well as Latin and Gothic, and Attila was exposed to Roman political and diplomatic practices from an early age.
He understood Rome.
More importantly, he understood what made Rome vulnerable.
And Here Is Where Trump Falls Short
This is where the comparison becomes much more interesting than simply calling Trump another ruthless ruler.
Trump possesses vastly more raw institutional power than Attila ever dreamed of possessing.
But that is precisely the point.
Attila had to create his power. Trump inherited his.
Attila united fractious tribes.
Trump inherited a nation of more than 300 million people.
Attila the Hun built a military coalition from warriors belonging to different peoples.
Trump inherited the most powerful military establishment on Earth.
Attila extracted tribute from the Roman Empire because Rome feared what his armies could do.
Trump does not have to ride across Europe to make his demands felt. He occupies the presidency of the United States, with its enormous economic, military, diplomatic, and technological reach already built for him.
Attila’s authority was personal because there was little institutional machinery beneath him.
Trump’s authority is personality too—but it operates through one of the most powerful institutions ever created.
That is a very different accomplishment.
And there is another difference.
Attila actually went to war.
He personally commanded the Hunnic military machine and led campaigns across Europe. His armies invaded the Balkans, threatened Constantinople, invaded Gaul, and entered Italy. His reputation was not merely rhetorical. It arrived on horseback.
Trump can order military force, and that distinction matters enormously. But the comparison to Attila should not pretend that commanding the machinery of a modern state is the same thing as personally building and directing a fifth-century warrior empire from the margins of the Roman world.
Trump has the larger machine.
Attila the Hun built the scarier one relative to what he started with.
The Mob Boss Has One Fatal Problem
Here is where Attila’s story becomes even more relevant to the Great Man theory.
Attila’s empire was built around Attila.
That made him extraordinarily powerful.
It also made his empire extraordinarily fragile.
When Attila the Hun died in 453, his sons fought over the inheritance. Subject peoples revolted, and the Hunnic political structure rapidly disintegrated. Within a few years, the empire that had terrified Rome was essentially gone.
Attila therefore provides us with both halves of the Great Man story.
One man can build extraordinary power.
But if that power cannot survive the man, it may never have been an empire in the durable sense.
It was a personal empire.
A personality empire.
A loyalty empire.
A mob boss empire.
And that may be the most revealing lesson of all.
The Empire That Vanished Like Smoke
The final irony of Attila’s story is that the man who seemed powerful enough to shake the Roman world could not create a political structure powerful enough to survive him.
That does not make Attila the Hun insignificant.
Quite the opposite.
He built a formidable empire from a fragmented collection of peoples, forced the Roman Empire to negotiate with him, extracted enormous wealth from it, commanded armies drawn from multiple nations, and altered the political and military landscape of late antiquity. His campaigns helped accelerate the crisis of a Roman world that was already weakening.
But Attila ultimately demonstrated the weakness hidden inside absolute personal power:
When everything depends upon the Great Man, the Great Man becomes the empire.
And when the Great Man dies, the empire can disappear with him.
That is the part of Attila’s story Donald Trump might want to consider before claiming a place above him.
Trump may possess greater technological reach.
He may command a vastly more powerful military.
He may possess unprecedented access to global communications.
He may wield the presidency of the most powerful nation on Earth.
But those are not accomplishments he created from nothing.
Attila had no such advantages.
He started with a collection of nomadic warrior peoples on the edge of the Roman world.
And he made Rome pay him to go away.
That is what an empire mob boss actually looks like.
And if history is going to remember Donald Trump as one of the great ruthless rulers, the question will not ultimately be how loudly he claimed the title.
It will be what he actually built that survived him.
Because Attila the Hun learned the hardest lesson of the Great Man:
An empire built entirely around one man can become enormous.
But it can also vanish like smoke.
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